The President and Vice President the United States of America are elected by means of the Electoral College (a term that does not appear in the text of the Constitution of the United States of America) according to the provisions found in Article II and the Twelfth, Twentieth and Twenty-Third Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America.

It works like this:

1. Each state is assigned a number of electors equivalent to that state's number of representatives in the House of Representatives and its two senators in the United States Senate.

2. The number of representatives each state is assigned depends upon a state's population in proportion to that of the rest of the states of the nation. The sole reason for which the United States Census is taken decennially is to determine where people live so that the apportionment of representation among the states in the United States House of Representatives may reflect shifts in population.

3. There are currently 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Each state has two senators, meaning that there are 100 senators. As a result of the Twenty-third Amendment, which was ratified in 1961, the District of Columbia has the same number of electoral votes that it would have if it had the status of a state, three, although it is prohibited from having more than the least populous state. This means that there are 538 votes in what is called the "electoral college" (the term is never used in the Constitution, by the way).

4. Thus it is that the 538 electoral votes are apportioned among the states as follows:

California-----------------------55 electoral votes.

Texas---------------------------38 electoral votes.

New York----------------------29 electoral votes.

Florida--------------------------29 electoral votes.

Illinois---------------------------20 electoral votes.

Pennsylvania-------------------- 20 electoral votes.

Ohio-----------------------------18 electoral votes.

Michigan-------------------------16 electoral votes.

Georgia--------------------------16 electoral votes.

New Jersey----------------------14 electoral votes.

North Carolina-------------------15 electoral votes.

Virginia---------------------------13 electoral votes.

Massachusetts--------------------11 electoral votes.

Indiana----------------------------11 electoral votes.

Missouri---------------------------11 electoral votes.

Tennessee-------------------------11 electoral votes.

Washington------------------------12 electoral votes.

Arizona----------------------------10 electoral votes.

Maryland--------------------------10 electoral votes.

Minnesota--------------------------10 electoral votes.

Wisconsin--------------------------10 electoral votes.

Alabama----------------------------9 electoral votes.

Colorado---------------------------9 electoral votes.

Louisiana---------------------------8 electoral votes.

Kentucky---------------------------8 electoral votes.

South Carolina----------------------9 electoral votes.

Connecticut-------------------------7 electoral votes.

Iowa--------------------------------6 electoral votes.

Oklahoma---------------------------7 electoral votes.

Oregon------------------------------7 electoral votes.

Arkansas-----------------------------6 electoral votes.

Kansas-------------------------------6 electoral votes.

Mississippi----------------------------6 electoral votes.

Nebraska-----------------------------5 electoral votes.

New Mexico-------------------------5 electoral votes.

Nevada-------------------------------6 electoral votes.

Utah----------------------------------6 electoral votes.

West Virginia-------------------------5 electoral votes.

Hawaii--------------------------------4 electoral votes.

Idaho---------------------------------4 electoral votes.

Maine---------------------------------4 electoral votes.

New Hampshire-----------------------4 electoral votes.

Rhode Island--------------------------4 electoral votes.

Alaska---------------------------------3 electoral votes.

Delaware------------------------------3 electoral votes.

Montana-------------------------------3 electoral votes.

North Dakota--------------------------3 electoral votes.

South Dakota--------------------------3 electoral votes.

Vermont-------------------------------3 electoral votes.

Wyoming------------------------------3 electoral votes.

District of Columbia--------------------3 electoral votes.

5. The individual electors may be any legal resident of voting age in a particular state, although they may not be Federal office holders or employees.

6. The Constitution leaves it to each state legislature to determine the method by which the electors will be appointed. It has been the practice for most of the past 180 years or so for the electors to be appointed by means of direct popular election in each state.

7. As a result of the rise of political parties, a development not foreseen by the Constitution's framers nor prohibited by the text of Constitution, each state legislature has enacted legislation to restrict ballot access for candidates for president and vice president to the nominees of established political parties who have nominated a slate of electors to represent them in that state. Those presidential candidates who do not belong to established political parties and who can gain ballot access (often a long and expensive process) in a particular state must nominate a certified slate of electors to represent them.

8. In forty-nine of the fifty-one jurisdictions in which the presidential election takes place every four years, voters go to the polls (or cast absentee/mail-in ballots) to vote for the slate of electors who are pledged to support a particular nominee for the presidency and vice presidency. In these forty-nine jurisdictions, that is, in every state except Maine and Nebraska, electors are elected on a "winner take all" basis, meaning that whichever slate of electors wins one more popular vote than its nearest competitor is elected en toto and then gets to cast that state's electoral votes on the first Monday following the second Wednesday in December in the state capital.

9. Thus, voters who cast ballots this year on or before November 8, 2016, will elect a slate (or team) of electors pledged to support a particular presidential-vice presidential team. If, for example, the fifty-five person slate of electors in California pledged to support the Democratic Party nominees of Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton and Timothy Michael Cain wins one more popular vote than the fifty-five person slate of electors pledged to support the Republican Party nominees of Donald John Trump and Michael Richard Pence that Democratic Party slate of electors is elected en toto. The other slates of electors (Republican, American Independent, Libertarian, Reform, Green, etc.) lose.

10. This is the same principle by which voters select candidates for statewide office (Governor/Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller, etc.) and their state's two United States Senators. Whichever candidate gets a plurality of votes in the state (a plurality is simply one more vote than received by one's nearest competitor) is elected. The losing candidates, no matter how close they get to winning, lose. They go home. They get no share in the governorship or lieutenant governorship or attorney general's office. I know. I did not get to share in 3.7% of the salary of the Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1986. The ticket of Denis Dillon and Thomas Droleskey lost, becoming but a footnote in the annals of meaningless political trivia. Losing slates of electors for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States, well, lose!

11. Thus it is the slate of electors that wins a simple plurality of popular votes in a state is elected as a team. Its electors will then cast that state's votes for President and Vice President of the United States of America. Each elector will cast one vote for President and one vote for Vice President. The Constitution specifies that one of the two people for whom an elector votes must not be a resident of the same state as the elector, meaning that Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates must be residents of different states by the time that the electors cast their ballots on the first Monday following the second Wednesday in December.

12. The actual election for President of the United States of America this year takes place on Monday, December 19, 2016. The election on November 8, 2016, determines which slate of electors will be elected in each state.

13. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, award two electoral votes to the candidate who wins a plurality of that state's statewide vote. The other electoral votes (two in Maine, three in Nebraska) in these two states are awarded on the basis of which candidate wins a plurality of the popular vote in each of their Congressional districts (two in Maine, three in Nebraska). This is a variation of the Mundt-Lodge Electoral College, named after the late United States Senators Karl Mundt, R-South Dakota, and Henry Cabot Lodge, R-Massachusetts.

14. No one is legally the President-elect of the United States of America or the Vice President-elect of the United States of America until the electoral votes are cast in the state capitals on the first Monday after the second Wednesday are opened and counted by the President of the United States Senate (the Vice President of the United States of America) before a joint session of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. A ceremonial committee of Senators and Representatives is appointed by the President of the United States Senate to "inform" the President-elect and Vice President-elect of their official election. This will occur on January 6, 2017.

15. What does all of this mean? All of this means that we do not elect the President and Vice President of the United States of America by direct popular election on a nationwide basis. In other words, the "raw" number of popular votes garnered by a particular presidential nominee's fifty-one different slates of electors on a state-by-state basis mean nothing insofar as electing the President and Vice President of the United States of America is concerned. Then Texas Governor George Walker Bush won the Presidency in the year 2000 by virtue of his having won more electoral votes than Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., even though he lost the national popular vote total by 543,895 votes. This is the system we have, and it means that the national popular vote total is meaningless. It is the electoral votes won on a state-by-state basis that matters. It is that simple.

These are the procedures, drawn from the Constitution of the United States of America and from state laws that govern the election of the President and Vice President of the United States of America in the general election every four years.

Mind you, this exercise in pure political science on the natural level changes nothing of the analyses that I have brought to bear concerning the fact that there is no candidate of either major organized crime family in the United States of America, the Democrat Party and the Republican Party, who supports Catholic teaching and has the good of souls at heart. This exercise in pure political science on the natural level has been offered to you to demonstrate to the screaming lunatics out there in "blue" states that no one who abstains from voting in places such as California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, Delaware and the District of Columbia is helping to "elect" Barack Hussein Obama. Wake up. Slumber no longer in your ignorance. Once again speaking on a purely natural level, the "votes" aren't there in those states for Trump. That's reality.

Let me try to explain this in the simplest of terms:

Fictional bus driver Ralph Kramden, who thought that his wife Alice had stashed away lots of money over the years, asked his wife to gather up all of their "mad" money when his bus drivers' union went on strike against the Gotham Bus Company. This is a paraphrase of the the dialogue:

Kramden: "All right, Alice. Gather up all of our mad money. That's right, everything you've been squirreling away over the years. Clean out the drawers. Empty your pocketbooks. Let's add it all up and see how much we have."

Kramden: "Eleven dollars and thirty-six cents? What have you done with all of our money?”

Alice Kramden: "With the amount that you bring home every week, Ralph, you should be thanking me for saving the eleven dollars and thirty-six cents." (Paraphrased from "Brother Ralph," The Honeymooners, November 26, 1955.)

Folks, you've got the equivalent of "eleven dollars and thirty six cents" in the permanently "blue" states. You are delusional if you think that voting for Donald John Trump in one of those aforementioned "blue" states is going to prevent Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton from continuing Obama/Soetoro's policies for four years (most likely eight) year in the White House. And one of the reasons you've got only eleven dollars and thirty-six cents in the "blue" states is because of the long term effects of Americanism on the psyches of Catholics in the United States of America and the counterfeit church of conciliarism's formal embrace of this insidious heresy from hell that leads nations into an abyss of chaos. (See Apostasy Has Consequences from eight years ago now.)

Obviously, people are going to believe what they want to believe. Very few people believed me in the year 2000 when I explained to them this exact electoral reality then (at a time I still believed in voting for minor party candidates of conscience). What I told them would be the case before the election turned out to be in the case in the election, prompting me to write the following thereafter:

The political analysis I have been providing over the course of the past few years in Christ or Chaos has proven to be right on the money. I expressed my doubt that George W. Bush could win the White House, in light of his intellectual shallowness and in light of the cultural factors facing our nation described earlier in this essay. As noted, Bush lost the popular vote, a loss that would have been exponentially greater had Nader not been in the race.

Furthermore, I indicated in the most recent issue of Christ or Chaos that certain states — New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont — were bound to fall into the Gore camp. Although I believed a vote of conscience was always the right vote to cast as a matter of principle, people in those states had a veritable “free throw” to cast for Buchanan or Phillips. We elect the president through the Electoral College; the national popular vote total is irrelevant. What matters is the popular vote total in the individual states. Anyone who knows anything about practical politics — and it’s amazing to me how unrealistic the so-called pragmatists actually are when they make their supposedly clever judgments about how to vote in particular elections — knows that the states listed above have tended toward the Democratic Party in national elections. The same people who used national polling data to browbeat supporters of Buchanan and Phillips into voting for Bush (because the polls said that Buchanan could not win) simply refused to believe the state-by-state polling data that showed Bush the sure loser in the ten states I’ve listed. (Justice Will Lose No Matter Who Wins, 2000.)

Such is the madness of pluralism, however, that many millions of people take leave of their senses in the diabolical trap that is the Judeo-Masonic electoral system and refuse even to believe the cold, hard facts of simple electoral arithmetic.

The Political Situation As It Stands Now

Given the fact that the head-spinning behavior Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey has resulted in yet another “win” for Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, my belief that Madame Defarge will get elected on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, is firmer than ever. Comey has felt the heat being applied to him by Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, Minister of Injustice Loretta Lynch, Clintonworld (which includes most of the “talking heads” on MSBNC, CNBC, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC), and many others. He wants to keep his job, although it is likely that this craven, cowardly act clearing Hillary Clinton of criminal wrongdoing will not be enough to save his job once Madame Defarge takes office on January 20, 2017. The Clintons do not forget—and they never forgive (unless the price is right, that is, and I am one of those sexagenarians who associate with phrase "The Price Is Right" solely with the late Bill Cullen,).

Although Donald John Trump has closed the gap some in spite of his many self-inflicted wounds and the sort of personal baggage that should have restrained him from running in the first place (remember, it was William Jefferson Blythe Clinton who encouraged Trump to run back in 2015 as he knew full well that Trump's personal history would be a gift to his wife that would keep on giving if he, Trump, actually won the Republican Party presidential nomination), the electoral deck is indeed stacked against him.

Even Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway, admitted the veracity of the polls that showed Trump running behind Clinton on Sunday, October 23, 2016 (see Time to Drain the Swamp), and she expressed frustration with him for choosing to attack the women who have accused him of unsavory behavior instead of focusing solely on Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton and multiple disqualifications to serve as the President of the United States of America (see Kellyane Conway Interview on Clinton News Network; this article also discusses the large role played by Trump’s Talmudic son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in the campaign, something that should remind the few readers of this site that Donald John Trump remains a wholly-owned subsidiary of Talmudism despite his nominal ties to the Presbyterianism of his infamously anti-Catholic father, the late Fred Trump). Mrs. Conway is a professional pollster. She knew what her own internal polling showed at the time, and the news remained stark in many of the battleground states where the election is actually decided even after the extraordinary events of the past ten ays since Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey’s reopening and then re-closing of the investigation into Madame Defarge’s e-mails.

Although the deck is always stacked against any adherent of the false opposite of the naturalist “right, Donald Trump, who is clueless about First and Last Things, has failed to make a consistently compelling case against Madame Defarge even on a natural level, and his lack of interest in the substance of issues further undermined his candidacy, making it possible for Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton to maintain her electoral viability even though she believes herself to be above the laws of God and the just laws of men.

In truth, however, the only public opinion polls that matter insofar as predicting the likely outcome in a given presidential election are those that measure voter preferences in the "swing" states, that is, those states whose electoral votes actually determine its ultimate outcome.

As has been the case in every election since 1988, the Electoral College votes of twenty-eight states are pretty much predetermined for one party or the other.

Let me provide a bit of an explanation.

Nine states, possessing a combined total of one hundred fifty-five electoral votes, will be in the camp of the craven “Ma” of the Clinton family crime syndicate, the pro-abortion, pro-perversity statist named Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton once the voting process, which began a few weeks ago in thirty-seven states, ends on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Those states are California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Delaware and Vermont. The District of Columbia's three electoral votes have always gone to the presidential nominee of the false opposite of the naturalist "left," the Democratic Party, since its residents were able to cast votes in 1964 as a result of the Twenty-third Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. It is delusional for anyone in these states to think that they will help keep Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton out of the White House in any of these jurisdictions. Even the Trump campaign, which is being run on a fiscal shoestring, will not spend a dime's worth of advertising in those states or do much, if anything, in the way of campaigning there.

Let me reiterate this fact on a state-by-state basis.

If you live California, a vote for Donald John Trump as the supposed “lesser of two evils” will not prevent Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton from winning the Golden State’s fifty-five electoral votes. After all, Californians, there are two pro-abortion female Democrats running for the United States Senate seat being vacated by the face-lifted United States Senator Barbara Boxer. Anyone who does not recognize that Republicans will never win another statewide election in California is living a world of absolute delusion as it has been devastated by the social engineering of the lords of Modernity that has been enabled by the likes of the now retired Roger Mahony, Tod Brown, and George Niederauer, et al.

If you live in New York, a vote for Donald John Trump as the supposed “lesser of two evils” will not prevent Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton from winning the Empire State’s twenty-nine electoral votes. Just as is the case in California, Republicans will never win another statewide election in the State of New York.

If you live in Massachusetts, a vote for Donald John Trump, who is thirty percentage points behind in latest opinion poll taken, as the supposed “lesser of two evils” will not prevent Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton from winning the Bay State’s eleven electoral votes.

If you live in Illinois, a vote for Donald John Trump as the supposed “lesser of two evils” will not prevent Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton from winning from the Land of Lincoln’s twenty electoral votes.

If you live in Rhode Island, a vote for Donald John Trump as the supposed “lesser of two evil” will not prevent Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton from winning the Ocean State’s four electoral votes.

If you live in the State of Washington, a vote for Donald John Trump as the supposed “lesser of two evils” will not prevent Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton from winning the Evergreen State’s twelve electoral votes.

If you live in Vermont or the District of Columbia (if there are any readers of this site in either place, that is), a vote for Donald John Trump as the supposed “lesser of two evils” will not prevent Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton from winning the three electoral votes each jurisdiction possesses.

If you live in Hawaii, a vote for Donald John Trump as the supposed “lesser of two evils” will not prevent Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton from winning the Aloha State’s four electoral votes.

Another five states (and one Congressional district in the State of Maine), possessing a total of forty-eight electoral votes are likely to be in Clinton’s camp come November 8, 2016. Those states are Connecticut, Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Oregon. Right off the bat, therefore, Madame Defarge can count on two hundred sixteen electoral votes, meaning that she needs to win only fifty-four more votes to become the forty-fifth President of United States, which will enable her to begin her reign of terror, both subtle and overt, upon “haters” who dissent from her version of the statist agenda, acting under the direction, of course, of George Soros. Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton thus has a far easier path to victory than does Donald John Trump, especially when one considers that the State of Minnesota, for example, has not been won by a Republican presidential candidate since 1972 when incumbent President Richard Milhous Nixon won every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, and that the States of Michigan was last won by a Republican presidential candidate in 1984 as then President Ronald Wilson Reagan won every state except Minnesota and the District of Columbia.

Moreover, the fact that North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia are even in “play” speaks volumes about the extent to which demographic changes within those states are making the Democratic Party more competitive in an area that was known as the “Solid South” for it from the end of the War between the States to the elections of 1964 and 1968. Such changes in and around the District of Columbia in northern Virginia, for example, have had a dramatic effect upon the outcome of statewide elections in The Old Dominion, which is a portend of what will happen in Texas, which only leans Republican this year, as illegal immigrants flock to the polls in even greater numbers in ensuing years than this year.

Additionally, of course, part of the reason that South Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona are said to be “toss up” or “swing” states is the result of an aversion on the part of their voters are opposed to Donald John Trump for variety of reasons.

The battle this election is for the so-called “toss up” or “swing” states: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. Those eleven states hold the key to the outcome of the farce that will or not conclude with the counting of votes, including many cast by deceased persons and illegal immigrants (and thousands of pardoned felons in Virginia) on Tuesday, November 8, 2016.

The reality is a little starker when one considers that there eleven additional states, possessing a total of one hundred three electoral votes, that currently lean in favor of “Ma” Clinton and her crime family of John Podesta, Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, and, of course, “Pa” Clinton, among so very many others. Including two at-large electoral votes in Maine, those states are Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, Virginia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Colorado, and Connecticut. Trump would have to win Pennsylvania, and one of the other states (perhaps Wisconsin or Michigan) to prevent a sweeping victory in the Electoral College by “Ma” Clinton even if she loses the popular vote.

Conversely, there are only eleven states, possessing an aggregate total of sixty-eight electoral votes, locked up for Donald John Trump. Those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Another ten states, possessing a total of ninety-two electoral are state to lean in the direction of the Republican ticket of Donald John Trump and Michael Richard Pence. Those states are Alaska, which has been a reliably Republican state in every presidential election since its admission to the union in 1959 except for 1964, Indiana, which Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro won in 2008 after having been in the Republican camp since 1964 during the Lyndon Baines Johnson-Hubert Horatio Humphrey tsunami that engulfed Barry Goldwater and William Miller, Kansas, which has supported Republican presidential candidates since the election of 1940 except for 1964, Missouri, whose voters last supported a Democrat back twenty years ago when “Pa” Clinton, flush with the cash from Chinese arms merchants, ran for re-election against the hapless, mercurial and inarticulate thirty-third degree Freemasonic ticket of Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., and Jack French Kemp, Montana, which gave its four electoral votes to the same “Pa” Clinton and Ozone Hole Gore in 1992 but has voted for the Republicans since 1996, South Dakota, Tennessee, which supported Clinton-Gore in 1992 and 1996, Utah, where a Mormon running, Evan McMullan, is drawing votes away from Trump, and Nebraska’s Second Congressional District.

Does Trump Have A Path To Victory?

Although it is possible for Donald John Trump to win, his path to victory is a narrow one, not that it would represent any kind of victory for the conditions for the cause of the true God of Divine Revelation and the good of souls, which is why it is important for those who have not done so as of yet to read the post at Call Me Jorge about Trump's full support for the sodomite agenda. Trump’s “victory,” should it occur, would put an end to all political opposition, as negligible and inconsequential as it has ever been in the Republican Party, obviously, to the fascist agenda of those engaged in rank moral perversity. Trump is controlled by Talmudists, and his view of “national greatness” stands in vast contrast to the truths written by Orestes Brownson one hundred seventy-one years ago now:

What, then, is true national greatness? We answer, that nation is greatest in which man may most easily and effectually fulfil the true and proper end of man. The nation, under the point of view we here consider the subject, is in the people. Its greatness must, then, be in the greatness of the people. The people are a collection or aggregation of individuals, and their greatness taken collectively is simply their greatness taken individually. Consequently the greatness of a nation is the greatness of the individuals that compose it. The question of national greatness resolves itself, therefore, into the question of individual greatness. The greatness of the individual consists in his fulfilling the great ends of his existence, the ends for which Almighty God made him and placed him here. No man is truly great who neglects life's great ends, nor can one be said in truth to approach greatness any further than he fulfils them.

In order, then, to determine in what true national greatness consists, we must determine in what consists true individual greatness; and in order to determine in what true individual greatness consists, we must determine what is the true end of man; that is, what is the end to which Almighty God has appointed man, and which he is while here to labor to secure. What, then, is the end of man? For what has our Maker placed us here? To what has he bidden us aspire? Were we placed here merely to be born and to die,-to live for a moment, continue our species, toil, suffer, drop into the grave to rot, and be no more for ever? If this be our end, true greatness will consist in living for this life only, and in being great in that which pertains to this life. The greatest man will be he who succeeds best in amassing the goods of this world, in securing its honors and luxuries, or simply in multiplying for himself the means of sensual enjoyment. In a word, the greatest man will be he who most abounds in wealth and luxury.

We mean not to say, that, in point of fact, wealth and luxury, worldly honors and sensual gratifications, are the chief goods of even this life; but simply that they would be, if this were our only life, if our destiny were a destiny to be accomplished in this world. It is because this world is not our home, because we are merely travellers through it, and our destination is a world beyond it, that the life of justice and sanctity yields us even here our truest and most substantial pleasure. But confine man to this life, let it be true that he has no destiny beyond it, and nothing could, relatively to him, be called great or good, not included under the heads of wealth and luxury. Nothing could be counted or conceived of as of the least value to him that does not directly or indirectly minister to his sensual enjoyment. No infidel moralist has ever been able, without going out of his own system, or want of system, to conceive of any thing higher, nobler, more valuable, than sensual pleasure.

But this life is not our only life, and our destiny is not accomplished here. The grave is not our final doom; this world is not our home; we were not created for this world alone; and there is for us a life beyond this life. But even this, if we stop with it, does not answer our question. We may conceive of a future life as the simple continuation of our present natural life, and such the future life is conceived to be by not a few among us, who nevertheless flatter themselves that they are firm believers in the life and immortality brought to light through the Gospel. Every being may be said to have a natural destiny or end, which its nature is fitted and intended to gain. The Creator, in creating a being with a given nature, has given that being a pledge of the means and conditions of fulfilling it, of attaining to its natural end. Man has evidently been created with a nature that does not and cannot find its complete fulfilment in this life. He has a natural capacity for more than is actually attainable here. In this capacity he has the promise or pledge of his Maker that he shall live again.

The promises of God cannot fail. Man therefore must and will live again. But this is only the pledge, so to speak, of a natural immortality, and reveals to us only a natural destiny. It is only a continuation of our natural life in another world. The end we are to labor for, and the means we are to adopt to gain it, must be precisely what they would be in case our life were to terminate at the grave. Our future life being still a natural life, what is wisest and best for that portion we are now living would be wisest and best for that portion we are hereafter to live. Hence, what is wisest and best for time would be wisest and best for eternity.

Hence it is that we find so many who, though professing belief in a future life, judge all things as if this life were our only life. They look to the future life only as the continuation of the present, and expect from it only the completion of their natural destiny. They agree in all their moral judgments, in all their estimates of the worth of things or of actions, with those who believe in no future life at all. They profess to hope for a future life, but live only for time; because their future life is to be only a continuation of time. Hence they say, as we ourselves were for years accustomed to say, He who lives wisely for time lives wisely for eternity; create a heaven here, and you will have done your best to secure your title to a heaven hereafter.

Hence it is that the morality of many who profess to be Christians is the same which is adopted and defended by infidels. This is so obviously the case, that we not unfrequently find men who call themselves Christians commending downright unbelievers in Christianity as good moral men, and who see no reason why the morality of the infidel should not be the same in kind as the morality of the Christian. Hence it is supposed that morality may be taught in our schools, without teaching any peculiar or distinctive doctrine of Christianity. Morality, we are told, is independent of religion, and not a few regard it as sufficient without religion. So common has this mode of thinking and speaking become amongst us, that we heard the other day a tolerably intelligent Catholic, who would by no means admit himself to be deficient in the understanding or practice of his Catholic duties, say, that, if a man were only a good moral man, he did not care what was his distinctive religious belief. Many who go further, and contend that religion is necessary to morality, contend for its necessity only as a sort of police establishment. It is necessary, be cause the natural sanctions of the moral law are not quite sufficient to secure obedience, and religion must be called in by its hopes and fears to strengthen them.

Now all this is perfectly consistent and right, if it be true that man has only a natural destiny. We ought, in such a case, to judge all things which concern us precisely as if this were our only life. Religion could be of no value further than it strengthened the police, kept people from picking one another's pockets or cutting one another's throats. But man's destiny is not natural, but supernatural. Almighty God created him with a specific nature, but not for an end in the order of that nature, or to be attained by its simple fulfilment. He created him to his own image and likeness, but appointed him to a supernatural destiny,-to an end above what is attainable by the fulfilment of his nature,- to an end not promised in his nature, and which is not be stowed as the reward of fulfilling it. This end is to know and love God; but in a sense far higher than we can know and love him by our natural powers, and as he is now beheld through a glass, darkly, or seen dimly through the medium of his works, as we see the cause in the effect. It is to see him face to face, and to know and love him with a knowledge and love the same in kind, though not in degree, with which God knows and loves himself ;-this is the end for which man was intended, and which it is made his duty and his high privilege to seek. But this end surpasses the utmost capacity of our nature, and requires not only a supernatural revelation of God, but the supernatural elevation of our nature itself. It consists in our being made partakers of the divine nature in an ineffable sense, and in a sense above that in which we partake of it in being created after the image and likeness of God. Hence, St. Peter says, "By whom [Jesus Christ] he hath given us very great and precious promises, that by these you may be made partakers of his divine nature." So also St. John :-" We are now the sons of God, and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; because we shall see him as he is."

This fact in these times is overlooked. Men have wished to rationalize the Gospel, to find a philosophic basis for the mysteries of faith. In attempting this, they have labored to bring the whole of divine revelation, within the domain of reason, and have been led to exclude, as no part of it whatever they found themselves unable to bring within that domain. Reason is necessarily restricted to the order of nature, and can in no instance, of itself, go out of that order. Hence, revelation has come very widely to be regarded as only a republication of the natural law, as at best 'only a running commentary on it, designed simply to explain the natural order, and not to reveal any thing above it.

Men who claim to be Christians, and even ministers of the Gospel, everywhere abound, who have no faith in the supernatural order, scarcely a conception of it. We spent nearly two hours the other day trying to enable a Protestant minister, and him by no means a weak or ignorant one, even to conceive of the supernatural; but in vain. So perverted had his mind become by the false theologies of modern times, that he could attach no meaning to the assertion, "There is a supernatural order." He could use the word supernatural, but it had no meaning for his mind not within the order of nature. Thousands are in the same sad condition. To them nature is all, and all is nature. Indeed, the word nature itself has no definite meaning for them. If a man by a word raise the dead, it is natural; if Moses smite the rock and living waters gush forth, it is natural,-all by a natural power, a natural law. Travelling in the same direction, they lose themselves in a wilderness of absurdities.

Natural laws cease to be laws imposed on nature, laws she must obey, and from which she cannot withdraw herself, and become forces, agents, creators. It is not strange, then that they lose sight of the supernatural destiny of man, and look only for a natura1 destiny, to be obtained not as a reward for obedience to grace, but as the natural consequence of the cultivation or development of our natural powers. Read the writings of the celebrated Dr. Channing, or of the school which he founded or to which he was attached, and you shall never find a single recognition of the supernatural order, properly so called,-any allusion to a supernatural destiny. The highest end you will find presented is that to which we may attain by the unfolding of our higher nature, of our natural sentiments of love and reverence. The school goes so far as to contend that our nature is susceptible of an unbounded good, and that our natural sentiments of love and reverence are capable of an infinite expansion. Yet these are rational Christians, and they boast of their reason! They talk of the absurdities of Catholic theology, and see no absurdity in supposing that a finite nature may be infinitely expanded, or that a nature can be something more than it is without any thing super-natural.

But this by the way. The true end for which man is to live is the supernatural end to which we are appointed, the beatitude which God hath promised to all that love and serve him here. His true end is not the fulfilment of nature, but what the sacred Scriptures term "eternal life"; and "This is life eternal, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." We cannot know God, without loving him. Hence we say, the end of man is to know and love God. But to know him intuitively, as he knows himself; for we are to see him as he is, -not as he appears through the medium of his works, but as he is in himself. We cannot thus know him naturally, for thus to know him exceeds the power of the highest possible created intelligence. We must be like him, before we can see him as he is,-be made, in a supernatural sense, partakers of his divine nature. To know him intuitively as he is in himself, is, however, the glorious destiny to which we are appointed, and to which we may attain, if we will. A more glorious destiny we cannot desire. In it we possess God himself, who is the sovereign good. Even here we find our highest good in knowing the truth and loving goodness, dim as is our view of the one, and feeble as is our hold of the other. What must it be, then, when we come to behold, by the light of glory, our God face to face, with no cloud intervening to obscure his infinite beauty, no distance between us and his ineffable love? Well may it be said, "Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what our God hath prepared for them that love him." He will reward them with no inferior, no created good; but will give them himself, will himself be their portion for ever.

But this supernatural destiny, since it is supernatural, is not naturally attainable. We may cultivate all our natural powers, we may fill up the highest and broadest capacities of our nature, realize the highest ideal, and yet be infinitely, -we use the word in its strict sense,-infinitely below it. It is not attained to by "self-culture," by the development and exercise of our highest natural powers, including even the boasted sentiments of love and reverence. It is nothing that is due, or ever can be due, to our nature. It is a gift, and can be obtained only as bestowed. But it will be bestowed only on the obedient, and is bestowed as the reward of obedience. Our destiny is eternal life, and the condition of obtaining it is obedience. Obedience is not, as some of the sects teach, the end for which we were made. We were made not that we might obey God, but that we might possess God, and we obey him as the condition of possessing him. (National Greatness)

Orestes Brownson was singularly devoted to Our Lady, explaining in an essay the social effects of devotion her (Moral nd Social Influence of Devotion to Mary) as he knew that the Mother of God had showered great graces upon him to convert to Catholicism. Brownson seemed to have absorbed the entirety of the Church's Social Teaching at the moment of his conversion to the Faith in 1844. Brownson's understanding that the true measure of national greatness is the measure by which a citizenry advances in sanctity and is thus better to able to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity, was, of course but a precise summary of the Church's teaching.

No Salvation Or Even Respite To Be Found in Electoral Politics

Neither the naturalists to the “left” or to the “right” believe that they have any obligation to pursue the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End, the possession of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven. The common temporal good of man must be undertaken in accord with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as explicated by the infallible authority of the Catholic Church in all that pertains to the good of souls.

The civil state has an obligation to foster those conditions in which its citizens can better sanctify and thus save their immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church. While Holy Mother Church and the civil state do have autonomous spheres of operation, the former must subordinate itself to the latter in all that pertains to the good of souls.

Furthermore, Holy Mother Church has the Divinely-appointed right duty to impose sanctions upon those in positions of civil governance who proposed to do things--or who done them as a matter of fact--contrary to the good of souls after she has discharged her Indirect Power of the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ by means of teaching, preaching and exhortation.

As early as 494 A.D., Pope Gelasius made the proper distinctions between the ecclesiastical and civil realms, indicating that those who hold ecclesiastical office should not hold civil office. Pope Gelasius did not teach, however, that a State must not favor the Catholic Faith, a little fact overlooked by apologists of the embrace of the separation of Church and State, which include, of course, Americanists of all denominations and the lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Indeed, Pope Gelasius wrote Emperor Anastasius in the year 494 A.D. to remind him of the superiorityof the spiritual over the temporal, keeping in mind that even in the exercise of purely temporal power the Last End of man must be kept in mind:

There are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. Of these that of the priests is the more weighty, since they have to render an account for even the kings of men in the divine judgment. You are also aware, dear son, that while you are permitted honorably to rule over human kind, yet in things divine you bow your head humbly before the leaders of the clergy and await from their hands the means of your salvation. In the reception and proper disposition of the heavenly mysteries you recognize that you should be subordinate rather than superior to the religious order, and that in these matters you depend on their judgment rather than wish to force them to follow your will.

If the ministers of religion, recognizing the supremacy granted you from heaven in matters affecting the public order, obey your laws, lest otherwise they might obstruct the course of secular affairs by irrelevant considerations, with what readiness should you not yield them obedience to whom is assigned the dispensing of the sacred mysteries of religion. Accordingly, just as there is no slight danger m the case of the priests if they refrain from speaking when the service of the divinity requires, so there is no little risk for those who disdain - which God forbid -when they should obey. And if it is fitting that the hearts of the faithful should submit to all priests in general who properly administer divine affairs, how much the more is obedience due to the bishop of that see which the Most High ordained to be above all others, and which is consequently dutifully honored by the devotion of the whole Church. (Letter to Emperor Anastasius)

Pope Saint Pius X explained the civil state's obligation to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, the forty-eighth anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady to Saint Bernadette Soubirous in the Grotto of Massabielle near Lourdes, France:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

By the way, one of the correlative proofs of how the conciliar "popes" have defected from the Catholic Faith is that they have done what our true Roman Pontiffs have never ceased to do, to "refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. To refresh your memories on this point, please see Mocking Pope Saint Pius X and Our Lady of Fatima.

Men who do not understand or accept this simple statement will live their entire lives steeped in a pursuit of earthly pleasures and wealth and success that will never make them happy. They will scheme and plot to get ahead of other men in this world without a moment's thought as to the Particular Judgment that will be rendered upon their soul by Christ the King at the moment of their deaths. They will speak in utterly profane and even blasphemous terms as they disparage each other as it suits their purposes to do so. The only thing that matters to the high priests of naturalism is their own self-importance, their own campaign war chests, their own ability to influence policy and key appointments so as to maintain their places in positions of power.

Obviously, fallen human nature inclined the courtiers who served Catholic kings and emperors during the Middle Ages to joust with each other for positions of influence and power. Some kings and emperors made war upon Holy Mother Church. True. There were, however, always those exemplars of the Social Reign of Christ the King who, despite their own faults and failings, sought to pursue justice in the temporal realm in light of the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had entrusted to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. And even some of the mediocre and even rotten apples who served in some capacity or another in civil government during the Middle Ages understood their mortality, possessing at least a remote sense that it might be somewhat important to make a good confession of their sins before they died.

Pope Pius XII wrote in his first encyclical letter, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939, about the tempering of the imperfections of men during the Middle Ages by their possessing at least some sense of the Catholic faith:

It is true that even when Europe had a cohesion of brotherhood through identical ideals gathered from Christian preaching, she was not free from divisions, convulsions and wars which laid her waste; but perhaps they never felt the intense pessimism of today as to the possibility of settling them, for they had then an effective moral sense of the just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable settlement. In Our days, on the contrary, dissensions come not only from the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis which has overthrown the sound principles of private and public morality. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939.)

Such a sense is entirely lacking in a world of naturalism whose grip on men has been furthered in the past five decades by concilairism's own "reconciliation" with its false principles, to say nothing of conciliarism's de facto embrace of the heresy of "universal salvation," leading so many to believe in the lie of Martin Luther, namely, that there is little that one can do to lose his salvation as long as he has made some kind of "profession of faith" in his heart and with his lips. A world where men either do not believe in eternal life or that "everyone goes to Heaven" is a world where amorality and practical atheism will reign supreme as the lowest common denominators of personal behavior and of social policy. It is also a world where most men, whether of the "left" or of the "right," believe that social order, however defined, can be maintained by the "good will" of men, a Judeo-Masonic concept that was smashed to smithereens by Pope Leo XIII in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884:

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."

And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests? (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

But the naturalists go much further; for, having, in the highest things, entered upon a wholly erroneous course, they are carried headlong to extremes, either by reason of the weakness of human nature, or because God inflicts upon them the just punishment of their pride. Hence it happens that they no longer consider as certain and permanent those things which are fully understood by the natural light of reason, such as certainly are -- the existence of God, the immaterial nature of the human soul, and its immortality. The sect of the Freemasons, by a similar course of error, is exposed to these same dangers; for, although in a general way they may profess the existence of God, they themselves are witnesses that they do not all maintain this truth with the full assent of the mind or with a firm conviction. Neither do they conceal that this question about God is the greatest source and cause of discords among them; in fact, it is certain that a considerable contention about this same subject has existed among them very lately. But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion, either that there is a God, or that there is none; and those who obstinately contend that there is no God are as easily initiated as those who contend that God exists, though, like the pantheists, they have false notions concerning Him: all which is nothing else than taking away the reality, while retaining some absurd representation of the divine nature.

When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall -- namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.

When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality.

If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call "civil," and "independent," and "free," namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony.

Moreover, human nature was stained by original sin, and is therefore more disposed to vice than to virtue. For a virtuous life it is absolutely necessary to restrain the disorderly movements of the soul, and to make the passions obedient to reason. In this conflict human things must very often be despised, and the greatest labors and hardships must be undergone, in order that reason may always hold its sway. But the naturalists and Freemasons, having no faith in those things which we have learned by the revelation of God, deny that our first parents sinned, and consequently think that free will is not at all weakened and inclined to evil. On the contrary, exaggerating rather the power and the excellence of nature, and placing therein alone the principle and rule of justice, they cannot even imagine that there is any need at all of a constant struggle and a perfect steadfastness to overcome the violence and rule of our passions.

Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep.Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring.

What refers to domestic life in the teaching of the naturalists is almost all contained in the following declarations: that marriage belongs to the genus of commercial contracts, which can rightly be revoked by the will of those who made them, and that the civil rulers of the State have power over the matrimonial bond; that in the education of youth nothing is to be taught in the matter of religion as of certain and fixed opinion; and each one must be left at liberty to follow, when he comes of age, whatever he may prefer. To these things the Freemasons fully assent; and not only assent, but have long endeavored to make them into a law and institution. For in many countries, and those nominally Catholic, it is enacted that no marriages shall be considered lawful except those contracted by the civil rite; in other places the law permits divorce; and in others every effort is used to make it lawful as soon as may be. Thus, the time is quickly coming when marriages will be turned into another kind of contract -- that is into changeable and uncertain unions which fancy may join together, and which the same when changed may disunite. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.)

This is a perfect description of the Judeo-Masonic world in which we live. No amount of the insane babbling of naturalists is ever going to “fix” that which is premised upon one falsehood after another. There is no getting the Humpty Dumpty Protestant and Judeo-Masonic of naturalism back together again as it is of, for and by the devil himself. The battle of the “false opposites” of the “left” and the “right” only result in one thing: more naturalism, which means more statism and more pressure to accept evil or face the might of caesar’s wrath, which is being fed by Jorge Mario Bergoglio's constant exhortations in behalf of "drastic" measures to "save the planet."

Jorge Comes To Hillary's Rescue Again

Although he has used the phrase "build bridges, not walls" several times this year in obvious swipes at Donald John Trump's plan to build a wall on the Mexican-American border to stop illegal immigration, Jorge Mario Bergoglio did so again on Saturday, November 5, 2016, as he spoke in Spanish to leaders of so-called "popular movements. There is no English translation of the full text at this time, but the Jesuit journal named America Magazine, has published a news story that would not have seen the light of day so close to the election if someone at the Casa Santa Marta within the high walls of the Occupied Vatican on the West Bank of the Tiber River had given a wink and a nod to do so:

In a speech delivered at the Vatican just three days before the U.S. presidential election, Pope Francis urged social justice activists from around the world not to give into the politics of fear by building walls but instead work to build bridges.

Because fear—as well as being a good deal for the merchants of arms and death—weakens and destabilizes us, destroys our psychological and spiritual defenses, numbs us to the suffering of others,” he said.

The pope echoed that refrain, describing the refugee crisis “a problem of the world” and urging political leaders to do more.

On the issue of migration more generally, Francis devoted several minutes of the speech to condemning “physical and social walls” that “close in some and exclude others.”

Mr. Trump has proposed building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, which led to a tussle with the pope earlier this year.

In February, following a visit to the border, the pope said in response to a question from a journalist that politicians who propose building walls instead of bridges are “not Christian,” leading to objections from the Trump campaign. The Vatican later clarified the remark, saying that the pope was not speaking about specific candidates. (Jorge Advocates Open Borders.)

This is not the first time that Bergoglio has taken an indirect or a direct swipe at Trump's plan to secure the Mexican-American border. He did so when returning to Rome from Mexico nine months ago now:

Bergoglio: Thank God he said I was a politician because Aristotle defined the human person as 'animal politicus.' At least I am a human person. As to whether I am a pawn, well, maybe, I don't know. I'll leave that up to your judgment and that of the people. And then, a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel. As far as what you said about whether I would advise to vote or not to vote, I am not going to get involved in that. I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and in this I give the benefit of the doubt. (The Most Outrageous Bergoglio Interview.)

Wasn't Jorge the one to ask "Who am I to judge?" when asked a question about the sodomite who runs the Vatican Bank, Battista Ricca?

Well, I guess it's one thing not to judge a persistence in one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance and another to judge a man who desires to secure the borders of his nation. Bergoglio does not believe that nations have a Natural Law right to protect the integrity of their borders by establishing an orderly process of immigration that takes into account public health and safety. Then again, he really does not believe in the Natural Law at all, something that he explained in Amoris Laetitia, March 19, 2016.

The Argentine Apostate is simply the first "papal" figure of the counterfeit church of conciliarism to give voice to the apostate views of his Jesuit brethren in the United States of America that have emphasized so-called "social justice" issues over "moral issues," thereby providing cover to Catholics in public life to support the chemical and surgical assassination of the innocent, a support that went unpunished even by the so-called "conservative" Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Such lack of punishment has given way to "papal" indemnification of both Catholics and non-Catholics in public life who support pro-abortion and to "gay marriage." Bergoglio condemns plans to secure national borders while he utters not one word about politicians who support two of the sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. (Please see the Appendix below for a review of early efforts by true Catholic bishops and priests to provide political cover for the likes of the Kennedys and those who followed them.)

Jorge's ready for Hillary, and you can be assured that he will send her a warm note of congratulations on Wednesday morning as soon as he learns of her election tomorrow.

To Criticize Trump Is Not To Support Clinton

Some have accused me of that any opposition, even rhetorical opposition, to Donald John Trump's support of various moral evils is to overlook the real temporal danger and harm represented by President Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton.

Please, are you serious?

Look, I wrote over two hundred articles, if not more, in The Wanderer between October 22, 1992, and January 20, 2001, on the horrors represented by William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Diane Clinton.

Indeed, the first article of mine that was published in The Wanderer was about then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton's having referred to Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Jr., who had been diagnosed with a disease caused by behavior contrary to the binding precepts of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, as a "hero." My article was entitled, "Magic, You're No Hero." An article of mine was published in Sioux City Journal just before the presidential election on November 4, 1992, entitled, "Character Is A Real Issue." And my second article in The Wanderer, written on the night of November 4, 1992, was entitled, "What Kind of People Are We?", a prelude of over one hundred, if not more, articles that I wrote about the Clintons during their eight years in office.

This recounting of my long and strong opposition to the merchants of baby-killing from Westchester County, New York, by way of Arkansas and the White House, the Clintons, has been offered so that readers will so that readers will realize that my criticism of the naturalists of the false opposite of the “right” is not to indemnify the naturalists of the false opposite of the “left.” I am merely pointing out that truth, not wishful thinking, must be our guide, and the simple truth is this: Catholicism is the one and only means of human salvation, and it is the only means of providing true order within nations. Efforts to bury Catholicism only empower the agents of Antichrist in both organized crime families of naturalism and all throughout the “popular culture” all the more.

The difference between the false opposites of the naturalist "left" and the naturalist "right" are far less pronounced than professional politicians and fund raisers want us to believe. Indeed, both have this fatal flaw in common with the American founders themselves: that it is possible for men to govern themselves without a reliance upon and submission to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church, and that it is possible for men to be virtuous without belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace. From that one fatal flaw flows all--and I mean each and every single one--of the evils associated with naturalism of the anti-Incarnational modern civil state. Once you understand that, ladies and gentlemen, then you understand that the devil wins no matter who--and I mean no matter who--wins an election in the United States of America. Those who proceed from false premises will always wind up worsening things rather than improving them.

Rest Secure In Our Lady's Loving Embrace

The true victims of the past two millennia have been those Catholics who have been martyred, frequently by the brute power of the civil state, for their steadfast witness to the truths of the Catholic Faith and to the Social Reign of Christ the King. Saint Alphonsus de Liguori wrote that over thirteen million Catholics were put to death by the authorities of the Roman Empire between the time of Nero in 67 A.D. and the Edict of Milan in the year 313 A.D. Millions upon millions of others have been put to death in the centuries since. These true victims who offered themselves to the Chief Priest and Victim of Calvary, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, did not feel sorry for themselves. They did not castigate their torturers or their executioners, although some exhorted their torturers and executioners to convert to the true Faith.

This is the time for martyrdom. Yes, for heroic martyrdom, certainly white martyrdom and possibly even actual red martyrdom itself.

Consider this example from the life of Blessed Edmund Campion, S.J.:

What must the prisoners of the sixteenth century have thought when the doors of the Tower closed upon them? Few men--or women--ever came out of the Tower in those days to tell what it was like inside. Most who emerged came out to go to their death at Tyburn. When Father Campion knelt in his cell, praying for strength to be brave and loyal to Christ to the end, he knew enough about the treatment that was most likely in store for him to have every reason in the world to be filled with fear.

He had heard of the The Pit, in which a prisoner might be confined for weeks and months. It was a cave running down for twenty feet and in absolute darkness. He knew of Little Ease, a cell so constructed that a prisoner could not stand upright nor lie down at full length.

Another form of torture was The Scavenger's Daughter. This was a broad hoop of iron which ran between the legs and over the head and forced the prisoner to remain in a crouched-over, cramped position. When this was maintained for days or more, it frequently was impossible for the poor prisoner ever to stand upright again. Before Father Campion's vision rose, too, images of the iron gauntlets that fitted over the wrists and could be tightened with screws, and of the awful rack.

This last instrument of torture was a wooden frame with rollers at each end Ropes ran around the rollers and the ends of the ropes were fastened to the prisoner's wrists and ankles. Then, when the rollers were revolved, arms and legs were stretched, often so far that all the limbs become disjointed.

One of the cruelest of the rack-masters, as they were called, was a man named Topcliffe. He performed his horrible work some years after Father Campion had met his Lord at Tyburn. He once boasted, referring to another Jesuit he was going to torture on the rack, that he would "make him a foot taller than he was before."

Is it any wonder, then, that for Father Campion, and for hundreds of others like him in those terrible days, the Tower of London was not a pleasant or quaint place, but an abode of horrors? Is there any wonder that he, known for his bravery and his gallantry, now knelt in his dismal cell and repeated the prayer that our Lord had uttered to His Father during His agony in the garden" Not My will but Thine be done"?

Christ's hero did not have long to wait before his worst anticipation began to come true. The warden of the Tower was Sir Owen Hopton, who was seeking advancement in the Queen's service. As soon as he heard that the famous Campion, the biggest prize yet to be caught, would be committed to his charge in the Tower, he thought, "I'll show the Queen and Lord Leicester how zealous I can be in the performance of my duty. From the very start I'll be as severe as I can with the traitor, and when Her Majesty hears of it, she will certainly give me a promotion.

At the very moment when Father Campion was praying in his cell, Sir Owen was giving orders to have Little Ease mad ready for him. On the afternoon of July 22, the door of Father Campion's cell groaned open, and a jailer's voice growled. "Come along, seditious Jesuit, we have a little surprise for you."

Father Campion blessed himself, rose and followed down the gloomy corridors. Another door swung open and he saw before him the small room, absolutely bare and almost pitch-dark, even with the door open, which he knew to be Little Ease. Sir Owen stood to one side, elegant and disdainful, watching the weary, disheveled man gaze in fascinated horror at the dreadful room.

"Well, then, Mr. Campion," he said mockingly, "where is all the bravery you protest in your lying Brag? If the sight of our Little Ease affrights you so much, how pale do you think your face will become when you see some of the other means we have here to break the spirit of rebellious citizens like you and your fellow-priests?"

"Fear is not the same as cowardice, Sir Owen," responded Father Campion with a calm dignity, and a trace of his famous smile began to show on his haggard face. "I never said, nor could I, for I am a man, and not an angel, that I would not feel fear at what lies in store for me. But I did say, and with the grace of Our Lord, I will prove it, that I would not be broken in spirit and betray either my Lord Christ or those Catholic friends who have sheltered me and to whom I have brought the Holy Mass and the word of God."

"Humph! Well, we shall soon see. In with the man, and let him think over his deeds and his boasts for a while."

"By what right am I subjected to this torture? cried Father Campion in a commanding voice. "I am an Englishman, I have not been tried, I have not yet been found guilty of any crime. Torture is for criminals--if indeed it is for anyone who is a human being. I demand to see the writ of the Privy Council which gives you the authority so to treat me."

"You can demand until you are blue in the face, my good Papist," snarled Sir Owen. "I am the master of this Tower, and who's to know that I have given you a little taste of discipline? He nodded his head to one of the jailers. The man stepped behind Father Campion, grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him, not too gently, into Little Ease. The door was slammed shut; the darkness closed in on the figure of Edmund Campion huddled in a cramped, bent-over, standing position.

For three full days and part of a fourth, Father Campion got to know the "little taste of discipline" Little Ease could administer. When his legs and back began to tremble and twitch from the strain of trying to stand, he would slump to a crowded sitting position, and when he could bear that no loner, he would struggle to stand again. Would the hours never pass? How many hours had to pass before he would either be released or lose consciousness? And yet, he prayed not to lose consciousness. He prayed that he might remain in control of his mind and will so that he could consciously offer his suffering in reparation for his own sins and for the conversion of his beloved England. [Father Harold C. Gardiner, S.J.,Edmund Campion, Hero of God's Underground, Vision Books: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957 pp. 138-142.]

This stirring letter written by a Claretian priest Spain during the Spanish Revolution (1936-1939) just before he (and others with him) were martyred demonstrates the difference between hiding the Faith in public life, whether as a matter of supposedly "clever" calculation or as a matter of habitual reluctance to speak the truth clearly no matter the cost, and being a victim for Christ the King at all times without any exception or equivocation:

We all die praying to God that the blood from our wounds may not be a vengeful blood, but that it run red and full of life in your veins, to stimulate your growth and development all over the world. Good-bye, dear Congregation! Your sons, the martyrs of Barbastro, salute you from prison and offer you our sorrow and anguish as a holocaust to expiate our faults, our weaknesses, and as a testimony of our faithful, generous and eternal love. The martyrs of tomorrow, the 14th, are mindful of the fact that they die on the eve of the Assumption. What a remembrance that will be! We die for the right to wear the cassock and we die on the very anniversary of the day on which we were clothed in it. (Quoted in Warren H. Carroll, The Last Crusade, Christendom Press, 1996, p. 110.)

Dr. Carroll went on to quote a member of the civil guard's testimony to the constancy of the Faith of the Claretian martyrs of Barbastro:

These [blasphemous expletive deleted] fools! No one could shut them up! All the way they sang and praised Christ the King. One of them fell dead when he hit him with the butt of a gun, and this is no lie. But the more we hit them, the more they sang and shouted: "Viva Cristo Rey!("Quoted in Warren H. Carroll, The Last Crusade, Christendom Press, 1996, p. 110.)

We must strive to be victims for Christ the King and for Mary our Immaculate Queen as we make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our own sins and those of the whole world. No Catholic, including this one, is proud of his sins. Indeed, we abhor them. We do not blame others for our sins. We do not seek to destroy those who may have firsthand knowledge of our sins of thoughts, words, and deeds. We take full and complete responsibility for our sins, recognizing that we are absolutely no better than anyone else. We must give thanks to God that it is by His own gratuitous gift of the Holy Faith and of the graces that He won for us by the shedding of His own Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, that we have even a little bit of a chance of undoing the damage that our sins have done to our souls--and for the bad example, if not outright scandal--we might have given to the souls of others--by living penitentially, especially as we fulfill Our Lady's Fatima Message in our own lives on a daily basis. Yes, we must strive to be victims for Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen as we pray as many Rosaries as our states-in-life permit.

The petty tyrants of today will fade from view soon enough. God is more powerful than any of the fools who think that their grand ideas and schemes can "save" society and make our own lives "easier" and "more comfortable" (sort of like they want to create a huge "national hospice" for us). A country that has killed over fifty million innocent preborn human beings by surgical abortion alone, no less the truly countless number of souls its wars have taken out of the Catholic Church and placed into Protestant "churches" and Masonic lodges, owes God a tremendous debt that might be repaid only by the extinction of its national existence

We must, therefore, embrace the Cross as never before, hoping that our lives of prayer and penance and fasting and mortification and almsgiving and total consecration to Jesus through Mary will help, especially by means of Eucharistic piety and our devotion to Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary, to plant just a few seeds for the day when all men will hail the Chief Victim and Priest, the One Who become Man for us to die on the wood of the Cross so that we might know an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise.

We must be champions of Christ the King and Our Lady, she who is our Immaculate Queen, champions of the Catholic Church in this time of apostasy and betrayal, champions of the truth that Catholicism is the and only foundation of personal and social order. Those who disagree do so at the peril to the nation they say they love but for which they have a false sense of nationalistic pride that impedes her conversion to the true Faith, which is what Our Lord Himself mandates for each nation on the face of this earth.

We must not be distracted by the side shows of naturalism or conciliarism. We must serve as champions of Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, refusing to march along in the parade of the ignorant midget naturalists.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saint Benedict Joseph Labre, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Appendix

Enabling The Spread of Moral Evils Under The Cover of the Civil Law

One Catholic politician after another has learned how to soothe their consciences by massaging them by claiming only to be “following the law” as determined by the legal positivists on the Supreme Court of the United States of America and/or by claiming to represent the “will of the people,” upon whom such latter day Pontius Pilates assert that it is “impossible” to impose “their concept of morality.” Yet others have been and continue to be so bold as to claim to be “pioneers” in behalf of “rights” (legal protection for “domestic partnerships,” including for the spiritual, moral, constitutional, legal and social atrocity that goes by the name of “gay marriage”). It is almost certainly the case, for example, that the Supreme Court of the United States of America will invent yet another “right,” that of “gay marriage,” in precisely the same manner that it invented the nonexistent “right” of married couples to purchase contraceptives in Griswold v. Connecticut, June 7, 1965, which set the stage for Roe v. Wade and Doe v, Bolton, January 22, 1973, Eisenstadt v. Baird, March 22, 1972, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, June 29, 1992, and Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor, June 26, 2014. Griswold v. Connecticut, though, was the jurisprudential foundation for them all, however, as the court’s seven justice majority (Chief Justice Earl Warren and Associate Justices William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, William Brennan—then the court’s lone Catholic justice, Byron White and Arthur Goldberg) “found” a “right to privacy” emanating from alleged “penumbras” in the Fifth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America. Obviously, this is exactly what Modernism’s “evolution of dogma” (labeled as “living tradition” by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and as the “hermeneutic of continuity” by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI), a point that was made in Modernists Say Nothing Original.

Then again, the process of soothing the consciences of Catholic in public life who wanted to remain au courant and not pose as a sign of contradiction by their complete fidelity to the Sign of Contradiction, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church has deep roots in the heresy of Americanism, although the groundwork for moral relativism began a year before the Supreme Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut as a number of leading Modernists, including the late Father Robert “Father Death” Drinan, S.J., himself met at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, to discuss how the Kennedys could accept the chemical and surgical execution of innocent preborn children under cover of the civil law while still claiming to be “good Catholics” who were simply following their “consciences”:

For faithful Roman Catholics, the thought of yet another pro-choice Kennedy positioned to campaign for the unlimited right to abortion is discouraging. Yet if Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of Catholics John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, is appointed to fill the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton, abortion-rights advocates will have just such a champion.

Ms. Kennedy was so concerned to assure pro-abortion leaders in New York, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Dec. 18, that on the same day Ms. Kennedy telephoned New York Gov. David Patterson to declare interest in the Senate seat, "one of her first calls was to an abortion rights group, indicating she will be strongly pro-choice."

Within the first week of her candidacy, Ms. Kennedy promised to work for several causes, including same-sex marriage and abortion rights. In responding to a series of 15 questions posed by the New York Times on Dec. 21, Ms. Kennedy said that, while she believes "young women facing unwanted pregnancies should have the advice of caring adults," she would oppose legislation that would require minors to notify a parent before obtaining an abortion. On the crucial question of whether she supports any state or federal restrictions on late-term abortions, Ms. Kennedy chose to say only that she "supports Roe v. Wade, which prohibits third trimester abortions except when the life or health of the mother is at risk." Presumably Ms. Kennedy knows that this effectively means an unlimited right to abortion -- including late-stage abortion -- because the "health of the mother" can be so broadly defined that it includes the psychological distress that can accompany an unintended pregnancy.

Ms. Kennedy's commitment to abortion rights is shared by other prominent family members, including Kerry Kennedy Cuomo and Maryland's former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Some may recall the 2000 Democratic Convention when Caroline and her uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy, addressed the convention to reassure all those gathered that the Democratic Party would continue to provide women with the right to choose abortion -- even into the ninth month. At that convention, the party's nominee, Al Gore, formerly a pro-life advocate, pledged his opposition to parental notification and embraced partial-birth abortion. Several of those in attendance, including former President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, had been pro-life at one time. But by 2000 nearly every delegate in the convention hall was on the pro-choice side -- and those who weren't simply kept quiet about it.

Caroline Kennedy knows that any Kennedy desiring higher office in the Democratic Party must now carry the torch of abortion rights throughout any race. But this was not always the case. Despite Ms. Kennedy's description of Barack Obama, in a New York Times op-ed, as a "man like my father," there is no evidence that JFK was pro-choice like Mr. Obama. Abortion-rights issues were in the fledgling stage at the state level in New York and California in the early 1960s. They were not a national concern.

Even Ted Kennedy, who gets a 100% pro-choice rating from the abortion-rights group Naral, was at one time pro-life. In fact, in 1971, a full year after New York had legalized abortion, the Massachusetts senator was still championing the rights of the unborn. In a letter to a constituent dated Aug. 3, 1971, he wrote: "When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception."

But that all changed in the early '70s, when Democratic politicians first figured out that the powerful abortion lobby could fill their campaign coffers (and attract new liberal voters). Politicians also began to realize that, despite the Catholic Church's teachings to the contrary, its bishops and priests had ended their public role of responding negatively to those who promoted a pro-choice agenda.

In some cases, church leaders actually started providing "cover" for Catholic pro-choice politicians who wanted to vote in favor of abortion rights. At a meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass., on a hot summer day in 1964, the Kennedy family and its advisers and allies were coached by leading theologians and Catholic college professors on how to accept and promote abortion with a "clear conscience."

The former Jesuit priest Albert Jonsen, emeritus professor of ethics at the University of Washington, recalls the meeting in his book "The Birth of Bioethics" (Oxford, 2003). He writes about how he joined with the Rev. Joseph Fuchs, a Catholic moral theologian; the Rev. Robert Drinan, then dean of Boston College Law School; and three academic theologians, the Revs. Giles Milhaven, Richard McCormick and Charles Curran, to enable the Kennedy family to redefine support for abortion.

Mr. Jonsen writes that the Hyannisport colloquium was influenced by the position of another Jesuit, the Rev. John Courtney Murray, a position that "distinguished between the moral aspects of an issue and the feasibility of enacting legislation about that issue." It was the consensus at the Hyannisport conclave that Catholic politicians "might tolerate legislation that would permit abortion under certain circumstances if political efforts to repress this moral error led to greater perils to social peace and order."

Father Milhaven later recalled the Hyannisport meeting during a 1984 breakfast briefing of Catholics for a Free Choice: "The theologians worked for a day and a half among ourselves at a nearby hotel. In the evening we answered questions from the Kennedys and the Shrivers. Though the theologians disagreed on many a point, they all concurred on certain basics . . . and that was that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion." ( See WSJ.com - Opinion: How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma. David Paterson, a pro-abortion Catholic, ultimately chose another pro-abortion Catholic, Kirsten Gillibrand, who has been the junior senator of the State of New York since January 26, 2009. For a review of David Paterson's moral corruption, see Little Caesars All (Pizza! Pizza!)

Even these notorious Modernist theologians, though, had received inspiration of a sort from two true archbishops, one of the, Francis Cardinal Spellman, had been a prince of the Catholic Church prior to the dawning of the age of conciliarism on October 28, 1958, the Feast of Saints Simon and Jude. Accompanied by the notorious Kennedy-family sycophant, Richard “Cardinal” Cushing, Spellman used a visit of Puerto Rico to cut the legs out from under the Catholic bishops of Puerto Rico at a time they were opposing a popular referendum to endorse contraceptives and sterilization:

In 1960, the Puerto Rico hierarchy decided to make one last concerted effort to drive the Sangerite forces from the island. The Catholic resistance was led by two American Bishops--James F. Davis of San Juan and James E. McManus of Ponce. The Catholic Church in Puerto Rico helped to organize a national political party--the Christian Action Party (CAP). The new political front was composed primarily of Catholic laymen and its platform included opposition to existing permissive legislation on birth control and sterilization.

When increasing numbers of CAP flags began to fly from the rooftops of Puerto Rico's Catholic homes, the leaders of the opposition parties, who favored turning Puerto Rico into an international Sangerite playground for massive U.S.-based contraceptive/abortifacient/sterilization experimental programs, became increasingly concerned for their own political futures. Then unexpected help arrived in the unlikely person of His Eminence Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York.

One month before the hotly contested national election, Spellman arrived in Puerto Rico ostensibly to preside over two formal Church functions. While on the island, Spellman agreed to meet with CAP's major political rival, Governor Luis Munoz Marin, leader of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) and a supporter of federal population control programs for Puerto Rico.

In an interview that followed his meeting with Munoz, Spellman, known for years as FDR's errand boy with a miter, claimed that politics were outside his purview. The cardinal's statement was interpreted by the press as an indictment of the partisan politics of Bishops Davis and McManus. To underscore his message, as soon as Spellman returned to the States he made a public statement in opposition to the latest directives of the Puerto Rico bishops prohibiting Catholics from voting for Munoz and his anti-life PDP cohorts. Catholic voters in Puerto Rico should vote their conscience without the threat of Church penalties, Spellman said.

Boston's Cardinal Cushing, John F. Kennedy's "political godfather," joined Spellman in expressed "feigned horror" at the thought of ecclesiastical authority attempting to dictate political voting. "This has never been a part of our history, and I pray God that it will never be!" said Cushing. Cushing's main concern was not the Puerto Rican people. His main worry was that the flack caused by the Puerto Rican birth control affair might overflow into the upcoming presidential campaign and hurt John Kennedy's bid for the White House.

The national election turned out to be a political disaster for CAP. Munoz and the PDP won by a landslide. Bishop Davis was forced to end the tragic state of confusion among the Catholic laity by declaring just before the election that no penalties would be imposed on those who voted for PDP.

Two years later, with the knowledge and approval of the American hierarchy and the Holy See, the Puerto Rican hierarchy was pressured into singing a secret concordat of "non-interference" in government-sponsored birth control programs--a sop being that the programs would now include instruction in the "rhythm method." While insisting on their right to hold and express legitimate opposition to such programs, the Puerto Rican bishops promised they would "never impose their own moral doctrines upon individuals who do not accept the Catholic teaching."

When the Sangerite storm hit the mainland in the late 1960s, AmChurch would echo this same theme song, opening the floodgates to a multi-billion dollar federal-life-prevention (and destruction) program. (Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 647-649)

It was five years after this travesty that “Cardinal” Cushing told a Boston radio station that he could not interfere with the “consciences” of state legislators as they considered whether to support or to oppose a bill in the Massachusetts General Court (the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts). This made it far easier for the Kennedys and the Careys and Cuomos and the Bidens and the O’Neills, among others, to support the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn in the 1970s with the full support of the ultra-progressives in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, one of whose leaders, Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, another true bishop, invented the “consistent ethic of life” (“the seamless garment) slogan to provide pro-abortion Catholics with the cover of “respectability” as long as they opposed the death penalty and supported one statist measure after another to confiscate wealth and then to redistribute it to the poor while “empowering” illegal immigrants at the same time:

Early in the summer of 1965, the Massachusetts legislature took up a proposal to repeal the state's Birth Control law, which barred the use of contraceptives. (As a matter of historical interest, the repeal effort was sponsored by a young state representative named Michael Dukakis, who would be the Democratic Party's candidate for the US presidency 23 years later.) In a state where Catholics constituted a voting majority, and dominated the legislature, the prospects for repeal appeared remote. Then on June 22, Cardinal Cushing appeared on a local radio program, "An Afternoon with Haywood Vincent,” and effectively scuttled the opposition.

Cardinal Cushing announced:

“My position in this matter is that birth control in accordance with artificial means is immoral, and not permissible. But this is Catholic teaching. I am also convinced that I should not impose my position—moral beliefs or religious beliefs—upon those of other faiths.”

Warming to the subject, the cardinal told his radio audience that "I could not in conscience approve the legislation" that had been proposed. However, he quickly added, "I will make no effort to impose my opinion upon others."

So there it was: the "personally opposed" argument, in fully developed form, enunciated by a Prince of the Church nearly 40 years ago! Notice how the unvarying teaching of the Catholic Church, which condemned artificial contraception as an offense against natural law, is reduced here to a matter of the cardinal's personal belief. And notice how he makes no effort to persuade legislators with the force of his arguments; any such effort is condemned in advance as a bid to "impose" his opinion.

Cardinal Cushing conceded that in the past, Catholic leaders had opposed any effort to alter the Birth Control law. "But my thinking has changed on that matter," he reported, "for the simple reason that I do not see where I have an obligation to impose my religious beliefs on people who just do not accept the same faith as I do."

(Notice that the Catholic position is reduced still further here, to a matter of purely sectarian belief—as if it would be impossible for a non-Catholic to support the purpose of the Birth Control law. The cardinal did not explain why that law was enacted in 1899 by the heirs of the Puritans in Massachusetts, long before Catholics came to power in the legislature.)

Before the end of his fateful radio broadcast, Cardinal Cushing gave his advice to the Catholic members of the Massachusetts legislature: "If your constituents want this legislation, vote for it. You represent them. You don't represent the Catholic Church."

Today’s Pontius Pilates had lots and lots of help from true bishops and true priests in the 1960s abd 1970s as their consciences were massaged to make it possible for them to support each of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

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